Program Notes

The program consists of recorded music, live music,
and spoken text. A recorded musical piece is followed by various poems and
essays that are spoken aloud. This scheme is divided into four sections.
The program ends with 12 Haiku for Speaking Voice and Violin.

The texts inhabit both the short essay and classical poetic forms. Poems
range from a Babylonian Acrostic, Greek Ode, Epistle, and Pantoun, to a
British Limerick, Free Verse, and a 20th century Clarihew. Two Sonnets
employ a modern style of 14 lines, unrhymed.

The contents of the
poems and essays are directly or indirectly related to the subject of
evolution, specifically to the process of symbiosis. Symbiosis refers to
long-term biological and cultural partnerships that have evolved from
distinctly different origins. The recordings employ different sources of
music that, when heard together, suggest a form of symbiosis.

Astrobeats (2006)

(recorded segments include various pulsars
recorded by radiotelescopes, percussion sequences composed and recorded by
the composer, and electronically generated sounds)

Pulsars are
neutron stars that rotate at extremely regular intervals. The piece begins
with the sound of a pulsar. In general, pulsars are louder than the other
sounds throughout, and can generally be recognized by their regular
beating. Toward the end of the piece, a composite of different pulsars can
be heard blending into and out of one another. Pulsars consist of regular
beats, the percussion track is made up of irregular beats, and the
electronic sound track contains both regular and irregular rhythms. In
fact, musical rhythms of every kind are composed of either regular or
irregular beats, or a combination of both. Sequences of pulsars,
percussion, and electronic sounds were separated by silences, equal to the
lengths of the segments, and reordered in random sequence.

Conversation Piece (2006)

The recordings of throat-singing are from northern Asian
and Canadian tribes, and include Tuvan, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Canadian
Inuit Katajjaq songs. Recorded animal sounds were sampled from around the
world in various habitats, including a bison, camel, chimpanzee, dolphin,
elephant, jungle frog, hyena, leopard, monkey, moose, panda bear, polar
bear, prairie dog, whale, zebra. Recordings of throat patients with an
artificial voice box often sound similar to modern computer voices, at
other times are nearly indistinguishable from certain animal voices. Each
track was separated into short musical segments, naturally bounded by
silences. The segments were then recombined independently of one another,
and separated by varied durations of silence. The duration of each silence
was matched by the previous segment's musical duration in the
sequence.

* by permission of Robert Beahrs
(throat-singing.blogspot.com) ** from recording of unknown origin (c.
1960's)

Gaia (2006)

The word gaia is Greek for earth, and was first used by
James Lovelock to describe the earth's surface as a single planetary
ecosystem. The electronic sounds are realizations of various planetary
phenomena, including the earth’s rotation, tides, light-dark periods,
etc. that oscillate continuously throughout the life of the planet. Other
phenomena vibrate in repeated segments of similar or varied durations,
separated by periods of inactivity. These oscillations include, but are not
limited to, ocean waves, brain waves, circadian rhythms. Finally, there are
sounds that occur for a finite duration, typically once only, on a
particular region of the earth, within a 24 hr. period. These include
phenomena such as high or low pressure fronts, atmospheric waves, seismic
waves, cyclones, tidal waves. Each of the four categories of acoustic
phenomena – air, liquid, solid, organic substance – has its own
frequency that has been transposed to within the human range of hearing,
and has been assigned a unique quality of sound, or timbre.
Eco-environmental sounds include entire ecosystems such as the everglades,
Amazon rain forest, etc. Weather sounds include earthquake, lava flow,
thunder, rain, ocean waves, etc. The solo violin music consists of borrowed
segments from a recording of my Solo Music No. 2 for Unaccompanied Violin
recorded by Marla Rathbun in 2004. The violin excerpts represent the
interaction of humans with the planetary ecosphere.

* The
electronic sounds were origianlly constructed by Josh Caswell and myself
for our collaborative sound
installation Voices of Earth

12 Haiku for Speaking Voice and Violin (2006)

Following the
traditional form, each Haiku contains 3 lines with a 5-7-5 syllable scheme.
The ‘musical’ Haiku for the violin follow the same pattern.
Each Haiku is composed of three measures. The first measure has 5 tones,
the second measure, 7 tones, and the last measure, 5 tones.

The
violin Haiku employ the fundamental intervals that appear in the natural
overtone series. Most of the Haiku feature a single pitch interval.
Overall, intervals range from octaves, fourths and fifths, to thirds,
seconds, and tritone. Three Haiku are based on two related intervals: major
and minor 3rds, major and minor 2nds, and fifths and fourths. There is a
Haiku based on the ‘pentatonic’ scale, an ‘open
strings’ Haiku, and one that incorporates a’12-tone’
scale.

Typically, Haiku employ themes associated with the
natural environment. In these Haiku, I have taken the liberty of
interpreting nature within a slightly broader context.